Life Coaches Yorktown VA

This page provides useful content and local businesses that can help with your search for Life Coaches. You will find helpful, informative articles about Life Coaches, including "The Road to Purpose" and "Weight Loss Advice". You will also find local businesses that provide the products or services that you are looking for. Please scroll down to find the local resources in Yorktown, VA that will answer all of your questions about Life Coaches.

The Road to Purpose

The Road to Purpose

The rigorous cycle of making ends meet sometimes leaves no time to follow our true passions. Yet making the effort to discover and pursue our life purpose doesn’t have to be a chore and can yield rich rewards— and health benefits.

By Allan Richter

January 2009

Kelly O’Mahony’s parents planted the seeds when they encouraged their daughters to join a church youth group. Instead of taking vacations to theme parks and beach resorts, the girls traveled with the group to help communities in Mexican slums, East African refugee camps and to other developing countries struck by hurricanes or steeped in poverty.

Then, on a trip to Guatemala 14 years ago, O’Mahony found herself captivated by a medical team working with orphans. “The number of people whose needs were met wouldn’t have been helped without that team,” she recounts. “It made me want to do that so much more.” O’Mahony became a registered nurse. Today, she works in a New York physical and occupational therapy rehab center. When the center has extra medicine and supplies, O’Mahony, 31, coordinates their distribution to a clinic in Belize.

“I’m very happy,” she says. “It’s beyond joyful. This is something that grabs hold of your heart so strongly and just keeps pulling you back to do more.” O’Mahony endured a stroke four years ago but is certain she has added years to her life by doing the work that stirs her passions.

She may be right. Science says O’Mahony and others who live meaningful, purposeful lives may be enjoying physiological as well as mental health advantages.

People who have a sense of purpose can benefit, one study showed, particularly if they are surrounded by tumultuous change, such as in societies undergoing political and economic transition. The study of 12,640 Hungarians showed that people who felt their lives had meaning had lower rates of cancer and heart disease than those who did not share that outlook (International Journal of Behavioral Medicine 6/05).

Getting There There is no shortage of strategies and exercises for finding and pursuing your life’s purpose. Some approaches, like that of O’Mahony and advocated by Richard Nelson Bolles, author of the best-selling career guide What Color Is Your Parachute? (Ten Speed Press), combine altruism with self-fulfillment.

Basing his exercise for finding purpose on ancient psychology, Bolles suggests that people reflect on their goals by mentally dividing themselves into mind, body, spirit and will. Goals should emerge from questions about what truth one wants to leave behind (mind), for example, or how to promote good health (body). “The spirit, of course, is ‘I want to leave more faith and belief in God behind me,’” Bolles says. “The will is the symbol of people’s choosing and conscience, so that would be asking how to leave behind more justice because you’ve been here on earth.”

Bolles extends the exercise to the senses. “With respect to the eyes, do I want to le...

Weight Loss Advice

More dieters are getting help from life coaches in their efforts to shed pounds.

by Martha Spizziri

July/August 2010

Eileen Caroscio of Burke, Virginia did what many people do when she decided to slim down—she set a specific target for her desired weight. However, Caroscio, 53, soon realized that rigid goal was actually undermining her success. She found that a more helpful objective would be to choose healthy food and exercise options. She ultimately achieved a weight very close to her original target.

Caroscio’s success came with the help of a coach—not of the sports variety, but a life coach. Life coaches help clients find out what motivates them. They may also help clients identify underlying beliefs that hinder their efforts and brainstorm ways to deal with obstacles. The coach may use techniques such as visualization or affirmations. Whatever the method, the emphasis is on helping the client discover his or her own answers, says Teri-E Belf, MA, CAGS, MCC, a life coach since 1987.

“We’re in business to help clients increase awareness, and increase their responsibility, which is the ability to respond to the awareness,” says Belf, who practices from Reston, Virginia. In addition to coaching Caroscio to her weight loss about four years ago, Belf trained Caroscio to be a coach herself. Earlier, Caroscio had turned her inclination to help others into a nursing career. The coaching process with Belf exposed a habit that, however rooted in her good nature, was hurting Caroscio.

“People in my family like to cook, and they would make these wonderful meals,” Caroscio recalls. She would accept their offers of food because she was afraid of hurting their feelings. “Through the coaching I realized that I can still be friendly, but I can decline the food, too. I’m a smart person,” says Caroscio, CSC, RN, MSN, “but I did not get those clear insights or ‘ahas’ until working with the coaching process.”

Ultimately, Caroscio lost about 20 pounds, although it took longer than she wanted—close to a year. For a while she kept losing, then gaining again as she figured everything out. “The good thing is, I’m in a better place in terms of health and tranquility,” she says.

Trained Listeners

When it comes to counseling patients regarding weight loss, many doctors are better at delivering medical services than advice, says Edward M. Phillips, MD, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School’s Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. “We’re not trained as coaches, and there’s a specific skill set,” Phillips says. Those skills include asking open-ended questions and knowing how to listen. As someone trained in those areas, a coach can work with doctors, therapists or nutritionists.

Phillips is also the director of the Harvard-affiliated Institute of Lifestyle Medicine ( www.instituteoflifestylemedicine.org ), part of whose mission is to teach health professionals to better assist patients with diet and other healthy ...

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